'Love on the Spectrum' - the Star Wars pugs
...Disney-Autism running rampant in society...
Among the television scenes I have witnessed in recent years, one stands out with arresting clarity: the revelation that 24-year-old Connor, pictured above, discovers his date possesses a diminutive canine named after a Star Wars character. On their subsequent rendezvous, both their Star Wars-themed dogs engage in a boisterous mating display, eliciting a profound panic attack in Connor.
This scene, in its bizarre essence, captures a profound truth. Two pug dogs, christened after Star Wars characters - themselves victims of a cruel human breeding program - trigger a panic attack with their impetuous antics. It's ironic, isn't it? Naming a pug after a valiant Star Wars figure, yet when the dog exhibits similar bravado, it becomes a cause for alarm, despite the owners' own delicate attempts at emulating similar feats.
What alarms me most about this series is not the depicted autism, but rather the participants' reverence for Transformers as if it were the new Shakespeare. Connor and Emily, seemingly intelligent individuals, are fully-grown adults whose intellects find satisfaction in material ostensibly designed for five-year-olds.
In another scene, two individuals with autism, amidst the African savannah, indulge in their Disneyesque romance, convinced that Kenya is a scene straight out of The Lion King.
Is this endearing and charming? Perhaps. Yet, one could argue it borders on the psychotic. The repetition of mundane clichés, the mechanical going through the motions, the absence of any real awareness of Kenya - it's all just a checklist item: 'saw a lion', and that suffices. But spare a thought for the driver, enduring days with this Lion King-singing troupe. I do, and there must be a psychological term for it: empathy that transcends conventional frames.
It's a phenomenon I've termed banding' in my Piranha-book: the confinement of the mind to certain frequencies. This 'banding' is what leads people to label such behaviors as 'cute', when in fact, they're profoundly psychotic.
I propose that we all reside on the Disney spectrum. Considering that even individuals with autism, among the most intellectually gifted, limit their intellectual aspirations to episodes of Transformers - shouldn't we coin a specific term for this phenomenon? Disney-Autism, as it were. I fear this is all symptomatic of a broader issue I discuss in 'Amanita Muscaria - the Book of the Empress': cerebral atrophy, induced by the exclusion of wild mushrooms from the human diet and their replacement with insubstantial sugars.
Essentially, such programs are a form of schadenfreude, disguised as saccharine empathy. But it's not genuine empathy; it's controlled empathy, transforming you into a quaint pug, oblivious to the world beyond the frame presented to you. And that is what people truly mean when they say you are 'being lived' - you're merely a character in a film, directed by others far less 'kind'.
(You can find my book Amanita Muscaria - The Book of the Empress here)
Martinus, 29-01-2024